The new cluster of cells must be the group of lost tourists that wandered Florence when I bought a purse from the leather-heavy man singing God Bless American Girls and slipping a matching wallet in my hand just because the shape of my wrist reminded him of his daughter's. I was afraid to fly alone then, fourteen hours on a plane to Europe while the world awoke and slept below me. My life was small like the complimentary peanuts, the packet of cheese, the tiny prayer that came with the meal. Not yet to Italy the pilot came over the intercom; they were making an emergency landing in Paris. I remember thinking that I had never seen the Eiffel Tower or the dome of the Sacre Coeur where inside strangers knelt after lighting candles for other strangers.© Kelli Russell Agodon
previously published in Geography (Floating Bridge Press)